Automated Meter Reading (AMR) started out as a more efficient and accurate method for utility metering data collection, compared to manual meter reading of electric, gas and water meters. Several important advantages of AMR over manual meter reading helped develop it into a specialized branch of the data communications and telemetry industry. Worth noting among these advantages are the reliability, accuracy and regular availability of metering data, collected from hard-to-reach meter locations as well as from standard meter locations; higher customer security (no need to enter homes) and satisfaction (accurate bills); and reduced cost of customer service call center and service house calls for settling billing disputes.
Various technologies are implemented in AMR. All implementations perform the tasks of interfacing with the meter in order to sense consumption, retrieving and communicating back the stored consumption data in the meter (stored in formats that are compliant with utility meter data protocol standards) to a central site, and storing consumption data in a computer system at the central site. Wireless technologies have become the most common in AMR system implementation due to the ease of the installation process and, in many cases, the low initial and operating costs of the system.
Among wireless implementations of AMR, a categorization has been established between mobile data collection systems and fixed-base data collection systems, or networks. Fixed networks may be based on wireless or wireline. However, the real advantages are with systems based on fixed wireless networks. Fixed network systems have some important distinctive advantages, brought about by the frequent (typically at least daily) consumption data collection, in comparison with mobile systems, which merely provide a more reliable method of collecting monthly meter reads for billing purposes. Worth noting among these advantages are: flexibility of billing date; marketing tools such as time-of-use (TOU) rates, demand analysis and load profiling, which enable clearer market segmentation and more accurate forecasts for utility resource generation, and also serve the goal of energy conservation and efficient consumption; and maintenance tools such as immediate notification of utility resource leakage or of account delinquency. These advantages have triggered increased interest and commercial activity regarding fixed network data collection systems for utilities, particularly utilities in regions undergoing deregulation of utility services.
Several methods and systems for implementing fixed network data collection from a plurality of remote devices, such as utility meters, to a central location, have been developed and introduced in the past years. A categorization has evolved as the AMR industry developed, generally differentiating between one-way and two-way fixed wireless data networks. Prior systems require that each meter module on the network be a two-way module, i.e. contain a receiver circuit in the meter module. Although two-way communication features such as on-demand meter reading and other remote commands for meter configuration and control are generally desirable, they may not be required for the entire meter population of a utility. Since the inclusion of a receiver in the meter module contributes significant cost to the module, it would be most desirable to allow a utility service company the flexibility to deploy an AMR network, which may contain and support both one-way and two-way meter modules.
A disadvantage of networks with distributed intelligence among the data collection nodes is the limited storage and processing power of the data collection nodes. A system that could efficiently transfer all the raw data from the meter modules to the network's central database would therefore be desirable, since it would allow for more backup and archiving options and also for more complex function calculations and processing on the raw meter data.